


reading the wall

by qwanderer



Series: brickverse [2]
Category: White Collar
Genre: F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, autistic kate moreau, implied canonical character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 17:55:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6089152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwanderer/pseuds/qwanderer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The corner was signed, clearly, in bright pale yellow, Kate Moreau.</p>
            </blockquote>





	reading the wall

The canvas took up almost an entire side of the shipping container. Everything else had been pushed to the far end in a jumble. 

"Oh," said Neal thickly when he saw it, and he sat down hard on the bare metal in front of it. 

The corner was signed, clearly, in bright pale yellow, Kate Moreau. 

But every piece of it was a careful reproduction of part of some other painting. 

Peter recognized a lot of the fragments. Raphael, of course. The bars and figures at the center of The Liberation of St. Peter sat heavy near the middle, off to the left. Michaelangelo (the hands from the creation of man), Klimt (both a large piece of The Kiss and a sliver of Goldfish, he thought). Escher's Drawing Hands. 

Magritte, of course, a slice of Man in Bowler Hat (the one with the bird, not the one with the apple) spliced straight through the middle of the face with The Great War of the Facades, offset and at an odd angle, such that the wing of the bird swept straight up into the lady's hat. A pair of clear blue eyes from - what was it, a Renoir? So many hands at work, Degas, Duhrer, Van Gogh. Polenov? A bottle of wine out of a Munch, small objects from still lifes, watches and coins. And in one corner with the signature scrawled across it, a stretch of blue, blue sea. 

It was the story of Neal, as much as it was the story of Kate. Even Peter could see that much. It was as if she'd laid out on canvas everything that was the two of them. All made of snapshots reproduced from other people's work. 

Even Peter recognized himself in the bars of the prison, in an adjacent fragment of a hand holding a leash. 

Recognized that this was painted by someone who paid attention to Neal, cared what happened to him. 

He thought maybe he'd been wrong about her, just a little. 

Neal's finger traced an odd chain of off-colored dots that snaked through between the reproduced sections. Shaking, hesitant, like he knew he shouldn't touch but he couldn't bear to be that far away from the slim line of markings. 

"What does it mean?" Peter asked softly. 

"I told you the bottle meant goodbye," Neal said, voice unsteady, eyes full of tears. "I was wrong. _This_ means goodbye." 

"Tell me," Peter said, sitting down beside him. 

"This is... it's _her,_ Peter. It's a self-portrait. It's...." He waved his hands, trying in vain to encompass the whole enormous thing. "She wanted to give me something to remember her by. But not just... not what she looked like. That was always so much less important than what she _saw._ " 

"Tell me about her," Peter prompted. He hadn't wanted to push, before. He'd wanted to wait for the right time. Now, with these images in front of them, it seemed appropriate. 

Neal took out a handkerchief, scrubbing at his eyes, then began in one corner. "Her favorite Van Gogh," he said, pointing to the folded hands from the Portrait of Père Tanguy. "She always loved the way he did hands. Not like a photograph, but she thought they looked real, anyway. Solid." He laughed wetly. "So, one time we were in Philadelphia, hitting the galleries on a Friday night, and Kate just kept...." 

Peter leaned back against the opposite wall and settled in for the long haul. There was a lot, here, for Neal to talk about. 

And, all things considered, Peter probably owed Neal one night spent in a hard, cold, windowless room. 

**Author's Note:**

> I realize Escher's Drawing Hands is a lithograph. I imagine her reproducing it on the canvas with oil-based ink on gouache.


End file.
